The sorting ceremony
by Raxhan
Summary: Draco Malfoy's younger sister is getting sorted - but not into Slytherin, as everyone would expect. I've just posted about half of the second part - hopefully I'll complete that part soon.
1. Default Chapter

_Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters are not mine! They are owned by J.K. Rowling, and all I do is borrowing them for my fanfic.   
_  
I've read only the first 3 books (that's only because we won't get the 4th book before September here), so this fic is about the sorting ceremony in Harrys 4th year. 

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**The sorting ceremony  
**A fanfic by MalfoyGirl 

The sorting hat had just finished it's song, and the sorting ceremony was about to begin. Everyone's eyes were at the new students. Many of them looked nervous, because they didn't know what was going to happen now, others looked like they knew what was going on, but they still looked nervous. Harry watched them from his place between Hermione and Ron at the Gryffindor table. It was the first time he got to see the complete ceremony, so it was interesting. Now it was his turn to clap his hands for every new student sorted into Gryffindor. Ron whispered comments about the new students, and tried to guess who would go to which house, but Hermione interrupted him in a low voice. "It's not possible to guess things like that! Can't you just concentrate on the ceremony instead?".

McGonagall explained how the sorting ceremony was done and then she started reading out names from her list. The Gryffindors clapped and shouted happily every time a new student was sorted into their house, and Ron poked Harry in the ribs every time someone got sorted in the house he had guessed beforehand. It wasn't all that often. Even though they were watching the ceremony, they didn't focus all their attention on it. But, about mid-way through the sorting, McGonagall caught Harry's attention when she called out the next name on her list.

- Malfoy, Melina

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other - shocked! Of course it shouldn't have been a surprise that someone they knew at school had a sister, but they just never thought about the possibility. And the girl was obviously Draco's sister - at least she looked pretty much like him, Harry thought. She had the same eyes and the same silvery hair.   
Ron whispered "guess where she's going?". in a sarcastic voice. He waited for a few seconds, and then answered his question himself - "Slytherin, of course!". He said it in the same tone, which showed clearly what he thought about the Slytherins.. Hermione shook her head. "I don't think so", she whispered.   
Both Harry and Ron took their eyes off the girl walking up to the sorting hat for a short moment, just to send Hermione a strange look.   
"What do you mean you don't think so?", Ron whispered. He sounded like he thought Hermione's comment was totally stupid, but turned to watch what happened now. 

Melina put the sorting hat on her head. Harry had expected the hat to scream "Slytherin" as soon as she put it on her head, just like it had done with her brother four years ago. With a family like that, he didn't expect that the girl was any different. But, she just stood there with the hat on for what seemed like an eternity. Surely, the hat had not taken so long time to decide which house was right for anyone who had been sorted today. Harry wondered what the hat was "saying" to her right now, because he thought about how it had been talking to him when he got sorted. It had actually wanted to put him in Slytherin, too, but he was really glad it didn't put him there. Now it was about to sort a girl from a family where everyone had been in Slytherin for generations, and it was taking so long time as this? What was going on? 

The hat interrupted Harrys thoughts when it suddenly screamed "GRYFFINDOR"! It wasn't just the Gryffindors who looked shocked, even some of the teachers looked like they just dropped down from the moon. After the first shock, most Gryffindors quickly pulled themselves together and clapped and shouted, just like they did for all the other new students in their house. But it wasn't hard to notice that they did it just because they were supposed to - the shouting just didn't sound as happy now as it did for the others. As far as Harry could see, Melina's facial expression didn't tell anything about what she thought about being sorted into Gryffindor. But he noticed she turned her back to the Slytherin table without even looking up, before she gave the sorting hat to next student. Oh well, not that it helped a lot to avoid looking at the Slytherins - there was still no way she could avoid feeling the furious look from her brother as she walked towards the Gryffindor table.

Even though the gryffindors acted friendly enough towards the new students, the atmosphere around their table seemed unusually quiet and somewhat cautious for the rest of the evening. Harry was just glad that most new students were seated at the other end of the table, so that he didn't have to think about what to say or do next. He had thought that the worst part of meeting new gryffindors would be when one of them recognized him, because he hated it when people's opinion about him suddenly changed just because they considered him to be famous. Because he didn't consider himself something special, he didn't like it when other people thought about him as that either. But all of this suddenly seemed like minor details, because the sorting hat just gave Harry another, much more difficult problem to think about. He didn't want to have anything to do with Malfoy's little sister, but it was impossible as long as they were in the same house. But there had to be a reason the sorting hat put the girl in Gryffindor? Harry wondered if sorting hats (he thought like that, even though he only knew about one such hat) could make mistakes, but suddenly Hermione's comment a moment ago came to mind. What did she really mean she didn't think the girl was going to be sorted into Slytherin? Such things were impossibe to know...weren't they?

The next night someone tried to wake Harry up. What was the point in waking him up now? It was night and he wanted to sleep. "Ron! Go back to sleep" he mumbled, but it sounded more like he mumbled to his pillow than to someone standing by his bed. A low voice whispered his name - it was Hermione! That was so strange that Harry immediately woke up completely. "What are you doing here? This is the boys' dormitory!" he whispered. Ron's voice was suddenly there, too. He whispered so low that it was almost impossible to hear him. "If this takes any more time, we're gonna wake everybody else up, too!" Hermione gestured that she wanted them to follow her down to the gryffindors' common room, and they tried to do it without making a sound. 

When they got down to the common room, they didn't need to whisper anymore, and Ron said: "So! What's the point in waking us up in the middle of the night anyway?" The way he said it showed clearly that he was just as confused as Harry was. Hermione just wasn't one to disobey the school rules, and sitting in the common room in the middle of the night they probably broke a rule, even if nobody found out. Secondly, for Hermione to be in the boys' dormitory - even if it was just to wake them up - was definately breaking a rule. Harry didn't get any more time to think about it, because now Hermione started talking. In the light from a torch on the wall, she looked rather angry.

"I didn't think you two were as stupid as this!" she snapped. But she didn't pause long enough to let any of them ask what she meant by that. "Certainly you noticed the strange atmosphere here yesterday?" she continued. "Such silence, such cautiousness just isn't a good way to welcome new students! At least some of us should try to act normally!". Hermione glared at them, as if she was trying to see if her words had any effect at all. Harry wondered what to answer to something like this, and all he got to say was "I see what you mean, but..." Hermione interrupted him: "there is no "but" anything! I'll tell you something - as long as you talk like that, you aren't any better than the Malfoys! (Those we already know, at least!). They hate people who are muggle-born, and if you judge a person only by her last name, you are doing the exact same thing!". Hermione stopped talking, and she didn't even look angry anymore. It seemed like her anger went away as soon as she had said what she wanted. She took a deep breath before she said: "All I ask is that we give her a chance, because I don't really think the sorting hat makes mistakes. Besides, she is a gryffindor now, whether we expected that or not." Hermione didn't even wait for an answer, she just turned and ran up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. Harry and Ron just stood there staring after her, but none of them said a word. 

Ron was the one to break the silence. "Why does Hermione drag people out of their beds just to say that stuff?" he wondered. "I guess she thought that was the best way to speak to us alone", Harry answered, but he heard himself just how stupid it sounded. If Hermione wanted to talk to them, it couldn't be that hard to find a quiet place at school - at daytime? He was sure Ron was thinking the same thing, even though he didn't say anything about it. After all it was nighttime, and they were both too tired to spend much energy on thinking out what Hermione was doing. They stole upsairs to their dormitory, and stopped to listen at the door, just to be sure that everybody else were still asleep. It appeared they did, even though Harry couldn't understand that Hermione didn't wake up the whole Gryffindor tower when she ran up the stairs a moment ago. "Maybe she knew some kind of charm which made it possible running without making a sound" he thought. "But, no, and they would probably never learn something like that in school anyway, even though it would have been very useful". 

On his way back to his bed, Ron kicked something along the floor, and it hit the wall with a loud crack. Strangely enough it seemed that all the others were still asleep. Harry couldn't understand it? Were they completely unconscious or what? Or wasn't the crack that loud after all? Did it just sound like it because he didn't want to make a sound? Oh well, it wasn't so important - now he wanted to sleep! The school year had not even started yet, and there had been more going on at Hogwarts already than what was going on for the whole summer at the Dursley's house.

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So! Now I updated this one! What I wrote before wasn't the complete first part, but you've probably already figured that out. This fic isn't being true to the original H.P. "plot" (or how to say it), but who cares? I did it just for fun anyway! 


	2. Chapter 2 (half done)

_Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters are not mine! They are owned by J.K. Rowling, and all I do is borrowing them for my fanfic.   
_  
_Here it is - chapter two! I'm surprised that my first real fic "already" has two chapters. Probably not the longest chapters in the world, but that's not the point :) Anyway - enjoy, and please r/r! _

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**The sorting ceremony  
chapter two  
**A fanfic by MalfoyGirl 

When Harry awoke the next morning, it was to the sound of an argument. Neville and Seamus apparently weren't the best of friends this morning. No wonder all the others were already awake, too - it was impossible to sleep in such noise, Harry thought.  
"I already told you, your shoe is _not_ under my bed!", Seamus yelled angrily.  
"I heard you the first time! But I have only one shoe, and I'm sure I put both shoes beside my bed yesterday!", Neville answered. He sounded half angry and half desperate.  
"You don't ever remember where you put your stuff, so don't yell at me because you always create such a mess around yourself!", Seamus said. It was obvious that the discussion was over according to him.  
"At least help me look for it!". Neville was on his knees on the floor trying to find his shoe under his own bed, even though he claimed he had already looked there before.  
Harry knew he would start laughing if he looked up at Ron now. This explained what Ron had tripped over and kicked along the floor when he walked back to his bed in the night. Neville always lost stuff, or forgot where he put it, or did something else along those lines, but this time it wouldn't be so hard helping him clear the mess up. Ron picked up a black shoe from the floor.  
- Neville! Is it this one you're looking for? He sounded so innocent it was impossible to guess he had known where to look.  
Neville gratefully took his shoe from Ron`, but he looked puzzled and Harry could hear him mumle to himself. Probably wondering how the shoe got to the other end of the room anyway.

The episode reminded Harry of what had happened before. Not that he forgot, of course, he had only hoped being able to avoid thinking about it all the time. He thought Hermione had done something really strange waking them up in the dead of night, and he planned asking her about it at breakfast. Then he remembered that she had run back up to her dormitory after saying what she wanted. She had not even said goodnight. Was she still angry? So angry she wouldn't talk to them? If so everything would be perfect, he thought sarcastically. One of his best friends was probably not talking to him anymore, and his worst enemy's sister just got sorted into Gryffindor. Yeah - "perfect" was the perfect word!

Luckily, Hermione was not angry. When they saw her for the first time, she was talking to them just as if nothing unusual had happened at all. At breakfast she immediately opened a book on the table in front of her after she had finished eating. But she still kept the conversation going. Harry wondered how she could read and talk at the same time, and still appear to have all her attention on both things. Ron, on the other hand, looked confused when she opened the book.  
- Hermione! It's our first day back at school! We haven't had any lessons yet, so why are you reading that boring school book?  
She looked up.  
"It's not boring - transfiguration is one of my favorite subjects!" she said. "And it's always good to prepare for the lessons beforehand!"  
Harry shook his head and smiled. Transfiguration wasn't the worst subject on his timetable either, but there was no way he'd start reading the school books before they'd had the first lesson of the year. At least he was now completely sure that Hermione was the same person as always. He glanced at her, and noticed that she wasn't reading at the beginning of the book - she was reading in the middle of it. What was she up to? Certainly, she wasn't preparing for their first lesson by reading something they wouldn't be learning until around Christmas or so. But as Hermione had said herself, transfiguration was her favorite subject, and she probably knew the book up the the point she was reading now by heart. That was probably why Harry didn't spend more time thinking about it. For him, it was enough to concentrate on what they would learn in the lesson this morning!

On their way to transfiguration class, Harry asked Hermione why she had wanted to talk to them in the night. He pointed out to her that it would have been possible to talk at daytime. She didn't seem surprised at the question, but she stopped to look around before she answered.  
"Listen! It was the only thing I could do if I wanted to talk to you about it as soon as possible." she said. "I mean, if I had tried to talk to you about it yesterday, somebody would have heard. And...." She stopped talking abruptly.  
"Heard what, Granger?" asked a cold voice from behind them 

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_So! This part is not completed (but you've already figured that out, haven't you?), but it's been so long since I last updated this fic that I'm just posting what I wrote up to now. Maybe it's stupid to post a part that's only half done, but now I did it, so I hope you don't find it too annoying..._


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